Middle of the pack? From my experiences, Ret's been pretty damn strong. I can't seem to find any parses, apparently I'm really bad at finding that stuff, but I've encountered tons of Ret pallies doing great damage, and I even pull some pretty strong numbers compared to many of my other classes.

---------- Post added 2012-08-08 at 04:06 AM ----------

Originally Posted by Sett

It's the only thing that seems to get their attention is a massive amount of HEY LOOK NUMBERS WHY IS IT LIKE THIS sort of things.

Because they're the only claims that can be substantiated.

Originally Posted by Novakhoro

I recommend shoulder surgery immediately... there's no way you didn't fuck it up with how hard you just reached.

its beta or live...ret golden era is over after WoLK. People get used to nerfs. On official forum I hardly see any ret dps discussion thread. Most people talk about ret PvP perspective. Perhaps very few people playing ret as dps

Middle of the pack? From my experiences, Ret's been pretty damn strong. I can't seem to find any parses, apparently I'm really bad at finding that stuff, but I've encountered tons of Ret pallies doing great damage, and I even pull some pretty strong numbers compared to many of my other classes.

From my PVE Raiding experiences in the Beta, we were mid to upper pack before these changes, so this recent tuning is pretty perplexing, and makes our sustained dps (our biggest issue in Cata) even worse, while with the Holy Avenger changes make us even more bursty, resulting in "OMG pallyz are OP" posts

Censure damage reduced by 15%.
Hammer of Wrath damage reduced by 20%.
Judgment damage and AP scaling reduced by 20%.
Exorcism damage reduced by 15%.
Seal of Truth additional damage reduced to 12%, down from 14%. Censure damage reduced by 15%
Sword of Light now jncreases the damage you deal with two-handed melee weapons by 10%, down from 20%.

Holy Avenger now has an additional effect: Abilities that generate Holy Power will deal 30% additional damage and healing.
Templar's Verdict now does 280% was (260%) weapon damage plus 1,918 (was 1,633).

I thought the design goal was to make us less bursty and have more sustained dps outwith our cooldowns

While I'm not a paladin, I have been frequenting the beta, and I can say that the reason probably is that even though a class is "middle of the pack" as the DPS is *right now*, that doesn't mean that its where Blizzard intends the DPS to be. For instance, if the damage spread was 60-70K (with hunters and locks lying at 80K with boomkins close behind as exceptions), they may actually want it to be 50-60K instead. A middle of the pack class would be doing 65K dps, so that's 5K above what they want the MAX to be.
The numbers are purely made up, mind you, but the point is, being middle of the pack in beta doesn't mean that you're not going to get nerfed if EVERYTHING is doing too much damage for their liking. The normal bosses were (mostly) stupidly easy, with a 10 man boss such as Lei Shi having "only" 70M HP.

What is this "middle of the pack" crap? Ret is a damage spec that does not bring more buffs than others and there even are pures that bring more stuff to the raid than ret. So what is that "middle of the pack"? It sounds absolutely irrational to have ret deal intentionally less dmg.

It's a DD spec and should be on par with every other dd. Or we get something that justifies this nonsense hybrid taxation.

Why should ret be supposed to deal less dmg than the rest? Why? Is it because it's ret and ret is just not allowed to be on the same lvl dmg wise as the rest? That is just retarded.

I was angry too at first, then I realised every class´ damage was nerfed. I still think it´s lame that retribution gets nerfed literally every build.

No changes > Nerfs on (almost) everything

As far as I know hunters were through the roof. They got equally strong nerfes like ret. The nerfes to ret seem to be very intense although ret was in most cases under-performing. That's what I don't get. We got nerfes in the range of 12-20% and in addition to that a 10% dmg nerf to sword of light, meaning to all our melee/weapon dmg abilities. And in turn we got more burst..

It just does not make sense considering the history of ret and why this spec sucked or why it was op.

While I'm not a paladin, I have been frequenting the beta, and I can say that the reason probably is that even though a class is "middle of the pack" as the DPS is *right now*, that doesn't mean that its where Blizzard intends the DPS to be. For instance, if the damage spread was 60-70K (with hunters and locks lying at 80K with boomkins close behind as exceptions), they may actually want it to be 50-60K instead. A middle of the pack class would be doing 65K dps, so that's 5K above what they want the MAX to be.
The numbers are purely made up, mind you, but the point is, being middle of the pack in beta doesn't mean that you're not going to get nerfed if EVERYTHING is doing too much damage for their liking. The normal bosses were (mostly) stupidly easy, with a 10 man boss such as Lei Shi having "only" 70M HP.

You clearly didnt test heroic modes or 25man.

OT: Was doing fine on anything that didnt require heavy targetswitching in the previous build on 25man. Not sure if i like the Holy Avenger change at all tho. :<

Data-mining may not get everything.. will have to test it out - but if it's accurate, we lost a lot of our consistent damage and became burst-bots again. They also did the Holy Avenger/Divine Purpose changes purely because Sanctified Wrath was an easy pick with our 4-set bonus.

Guys, calm down. Classes aren't just balanced against each other, they're balanced against content. A few other specs are also going to eat serious nerfs this build (hello, Hunters!), don't be surprised if a bunch of other specs also get their turn in the grinder in the next build or the one after that. This isn't the sky falling, it's the fabled numbers pass finally starting to happen now that mechanics have been mostly solidified.

See that green flowery circle over there? Stand on it. No, don't run away from it! C'mon!

Guys, calm down. Classes aren't just balanced against each other, they're balanced against content. A few other specs are also going to eat serious nerfs this build (hello, Hunters!), don't be surprised if a bunch of other specs also get their turn in the grinder in the next build or the one after that. This isn't the sky falling, it's the fabled numbers pass finally starting to happen now that mechanics have been mostly solidified.

You mean the guys who got every rotational ability they use severely nerfed? Arcane Shot, Kill Command, Serpent Sting, pet damage and Cobra Shot were all taken down a number of pegs according to the datamining.

Again, this is not the sky falling or the end of the world. Numbers are being tweaked, and we should expect even more changes to Retribution and other specs' DPS if there are loose ends that need to be tied up. Blizzard rarely does things in a single pass, so there will be more adjusments.

EDIT: and since we're here...

Originally Posted by Ghostcrawler

We have made several adjustments based on player feedback, raid testing, and fixing some bugs. Some of the changes were made to keep secondary stats scaling appropriately and some were when specs were doing too much damage. Here's a quick cheat sheet for where we are. Even "tuned" does not mean set in stone and ready for ship.

Guys, calm down. Classes aren't just balanced against each other, they're balanced against content. A few other specs are also going to eat serious nerfs this build (hello, Hunters!), don't be surprised if a bunch of other specs also get their turn in the grinder in the next build or the one after that. This isn't the sky falling, it's the fabled numbers pass finally starting to happen now that mechanics have been mostly solidified.

It's not about sky falling or anything like that yes hunters nerf are justified because they were doing something roughly 8k more dps more than any other class. Also I'm ok with retri nerf or tweaking because as stated most of the classes if not all are getting dmg nerfs and tweak. However, my only problem is buffing our most hateful RNG the divine purpose and making Holy Avenger no brainer which against Blizzard mentality about the new talents system that's the only problems I have with these changes the rest of the stuff I'm totally ok with.

Except Divine Purpose is for paladins in general, and optional at that. You don't have to take it if you don't want it. The only reason that RNG was so hated was because it was unavoidable.

What malthanis said,

Some people have to calm down a bit and wait for time to pass. You can all assume what you want, yet we have another (possible month and a half) to go until the ultimate release. And if it turns out that you're class is utterly useless; changes will be made
played a ret myself over Wrath and Early Cata and tbh, rets right now are fine. If played right (yes it's different as before) you can pull some crazy out of control numbers, same as every other class. It's a new expansion, don't be frightened, and seriously, don't go crazy over somethings thats most likely temporary. Look at how they changed your class in the previous builds. Time for some to see the big picture. It's not because this build gives you a 15% decrease that the fictional 40% buff you had 5 builds ago is nullified. No, you're getting a 40% buff on an ability, Which would be at 140% (lets assume this) Take the build now, oh 15% off, well still a 25% increase over what it was.

Hold your horses until the last and final patchnotes are there, if you don't like it, go do some mathematics and see how well rets are actually doing
besides, parses don't tell you nothing. Have a look at boomkins, parses say you're screwed, yet they have proven to be most powerful when played correctly over the last 3 patches.